


ever the sea is watching

by cindo



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fluff, this is the mermaid au no one asked for, vaguely fenris/isabela if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:57:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cindo/pseuds/cindo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when isabela finds herself staring at a dead end, the sea gives her a way out. there is magic in the sea, some say, but isabela is not sure she believes them. what she does know is this: when she hears the waters reach out to her with whispers of escape and freedom on its lips, she grasps it with both hands and doesn't let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ever the sea is watching

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang 2015!

Isabela sees him just as the water pulls him under, a mop of dark hair disappearing below the crest of the next wave as it crashes against the outcropping of rock. The mood of the waters changes quickly here, fickle and perverse as the moon itself, and it is dangerous indeed to be caught in them. Perhaps that is why she likes it, a quiet defiance to the sea itself, a playful challenge: _come and get me._

Sometimes she sings, her voice bouncing against the crevices of the rocks, echoing like a siren’s call to the stars. She sings of the sea, of the land, of the follies of men—and there is laughter around the edges, barely contained.

She isn’t singing when she sees him, though, and later, she knows she would’ve let him drown had she been, singing counterpoint to the waves’ triumph. Isabela wonders if that is so bad as it sounds.

As it is, Isabela chases after the stranger, who looks like a boy from the distance, a smile playing at the edges of her lips as she descends deeper and deeper into the water’s depths after a stranger who is more than likely already dead.

 _Perhaps_ she’d like to eat him. Isabela considers this, golden eyes sparkling with delight. All the tales that Zevran brings her say so, after all.

But first, first she catches up to him and wraps her arm around his waist—so small that she could almost hug with only the tiniest of efforts, and he is thin enough that she can feel the jut of his bones pressing against her. It is an easy thing to pull him back to the surface, her tail flitting back and forth behind her, leaving a trail of bubbles for all to see.

 _Try and take him back,_ she dares the sea, who does not answer.

They break the surface of the water together, though it is only Isabela who makes a sound, a harsh breath of laughter when she sees that there are still signs of life in the boy yet. His heart is beating wildly, frantically, uneven and stuttering as his lungs struggle to expel the water lodged in them. Isabela drags him to one of the flatter rocks, just big enough for her to push him onto. His feet dangle off the end of the rock.

She gets her first good look at the boy now, this stranger who she has stolen from the sea on a whim. He’s got dark hair plastered to his forehead from seawater, darker skin dotted with freckles. She wonders if his eyes are even darker, wonders if his gaze would smoulder, and smirks at the thought.

His clothes cling to his too-thin frame, a simple cloth-spun shirt and plain trousers. He is not wearing any shoes.

What she notices last are the points of his ears. _“Oh,”_ she breathes, and her voice is rough with sea salt, “an elf.”

As it turns out, his eyes are green like the forests Isabela sees in the distance, unfocused at first. She sees the exact moment that understanding—at least, as close to understanding as you can get when you wake up on a rock in the middle of the sea—flashes in those eyes, and he tries to push himself away from her.

He can’t be more than twenty, she thinks vaguely, and what are mortal years to someone who is not? Carefully, she follows his movement.

“Pretty thing,” she purrs with a flick of her tail. “Are you lost?”

There is something of wariness in the way he watches her when she meets his gaze unflinchingly. Well, at least this one isn’t stupid—barring the circumstance that she found him in, of course—none of that falling in love at first sight she gets from sailors who answer her songs.

 _Love,_ Isabela complains at regular intervals to the moon and the stars, _is for fools who don’t know any better._

But no—the boy does not seem like he is particularly enamored with the way she is arrayed, and maybe that’s a good thing. He doesn’t seem to have found his voice yet, though she can see the way he swallows, the way his eyes flicker back and forth between her and the sea around them.

“You weren’t trying to off yourself, were you?” she asks, having grown impatient with waiting for him to find his words again. Isabela knows more than she’d care to admit about finding freedom in the sea, and who is she to begrudge others the attempt? Even if it was an unsuccessful attempt. Even if he is practically a boy still, his whole life laid out in front of him.

How old was she, when she decided that this was the only path left to her? Couldn’t have been much older than him, yet it feels like such a long time ago to her, now.

But anger flashes in his eyes as wild and sudden as fire across the horizon. The boy draws himself up as best he can and his lips pull back in some semblance of a snarl. “I’m not–” His voice is little more than a rasp, scratchy and thin. One of his hands comes up to his throat, gingerly touching it. He winces, but turns it into a glare as he rounds again on Isabela. _“No.”_ Like the suggestion of suicide physically repulses him. Like he wouldn’t have done exactly that had she not decided to save him.

Isabela shrugs in the face of such quick temper, and averts her eyes so that she is facing south, towards Tevinter’s shores.

It’s not so far a swim for _her_ , but she has gone further and in less time in the long years she has spent at sea, and distance, like the years that mark one’s age, is measured differently to someone who dwells on land. It cannot be more than half a day’s swim even for a boy with limbs as thin as his, but it cannot have been an easy one, especially in this area, dotted with rocks and reefs, and all manner of other dangers.

She notices the movement in the corner of her vision, sees him push himself to the edge of the rock, dipping his feet down so that his toes brush the water. She does not move, and keeps her eyes carefully away from him. She sees something familiar in him, in the way his eyes never seem to rest on anything for long, in the way his fingers grapple for purchase on water-smoothed rock.

“What’s a thing like you doing so far from shore, then?” Isabela says instead, keeping her voice light.

Silence settles between them for the length of a few heartbeats, before the boy seems to deflate, anger gone from his frame as he sags forward. He sneaks a glance over to her that Isabela pretends not to notice, and mutters something that gets lost to the wind. Then he clears his throat. His cheeks are just a slight shade darker when he finally meets her eyes and says, “I was swimming.” Isabela recognizes the tone, as one she so often uses herself, when the mood strikes and she wants a reason to be angry at a world that does not agree with her.

And _oh_ , how his voice sounds, like liquid honey, like the darkness in the depths of the sea. She lets out a low whistle. _A girl can appreciate, can’t she?_

His gaze flicks to her tail. Isabela reads a clear question in his eyes, and she allows herself a small, smug smile. “What, you’ve never seen one of us before? How often do you go… swimming?”

The flush on his cheeks deepens, as if he is ashamed to show his curiosity, his ignorance. As if it was such a thing to be ashamed of, to not have seen Isabela in the waters. As if it were so easy a thing to do.

No one can blame him for that, and that’s just the way Isabela likes it.

“Only when the master has gone south for the winter,” he admits, and looks away, brows scrunching in concentration. “I should go back, before mother worries,” he adds, and pushes himself to his feet.

Isabela’s good mood ebbs away a little at his words—they bring up unpleasant memories she would much rather avoid, and besides, her heart has always sung for those who were not free.

Before she can doubt herself, doubt what she is about to do, Isabela places a hand on his arm and squeezes briefly before she slips back into the water. “Rest, I’ll see you back on land before you wake.” After all, there are songs for this—songs that she has made and learned and stolen, traded for in pearls and jewels and love, whose words hold power to move the sea itself.

“How?” he demands, wrapping his arms around himself.

Isabela throws her head back and laughs without reserve, before she gives this inconstant boy a wink. “A woman can’t give away all her secrets, pretty thing.”

“Stop calling me that.” He scowls, seems to deliberate, and then adds, “My name is Leto.”

“Wonderful!” she exclaims, as a smile tugs at her lips, “You’ve got a name. So have I, as it turns out! I’m Isabela.”

The distrust is clear in his eyes, and he does not reply, but he does not try to go back on his own either, and so will not drown when his strength leaves him halfway to the shore.

It would be a waste, Isabela thinks, to see the light in his eyes fade under the suffocating grip of still death.

* * *

She does not expect to see the boy with the green eyes again— _Leto_ , her mind supplies helpfully, ever reliant it is!—but it has scant been a whole cycle of the moon before she spots that familiar head of dark hair along the shore just as the sun is about to disappear in the west.

Delighted, she makes her way towards him, calling out a greeting.

The water is not unpleasant for this time of year, when there is frost on the rocks before the sun rises, and besides, Isabela has never shied away from the cold before. Leto plainly thinks the same as he catches her eye and dips his head in acknowledgement.

No smile, but that’s something she can work on.

“I know, I’m hard to resist, you don’t have to say it,” Isabela says when he’s waded thigh-deep into the water. She sees the initial shiver of surprise as cold water meets bare skin, before the tension leaves his shoulders again. She circles him once before leading him over to where a low outcrop of rock provides a place for him to sit, and a place for them to talk.

She assumes this is what he wants to do, and it is not often that Isabela misses her guess when men are involved.

But Leto does not say anything, only sits where she bid him sit in a spot under the fading sun, in all appearances looking to be intent on chewing his lip through.

At last, after what seems like an insurmountable amount of time has passed, Leto meets her eyes again, and Isabela cannot help the way she leans forward eagerly, eyes glinting. Oh, but she has always loved a good mystery, and was this strange elf not the biggest one she has encountered yet?

There is contradiction to be found in every line in his body, written across the expressions he wears unguarded, a clear passage to the thoughts behind those green, green eyes. He switches from anger to reluctance to shame in the space of a breath, and even Isabela, who can be extremely fond of tempestuous moods, finds it hard to keep up.

“I wanted to thank you,” Leto says finally, the words slow and heavily weighted, like it has taken all this time to push out of his chest. Speaking of pushing something out of his chest in a very literal sense, Isabela watches curiously as he pulls something from the folds of his tunic, a little cloth bag tied with string that he shoves towards Isabela.

She cannot deny that treasures are not the quickest way to her favor, so she does not, and takes the bag with no hesitation, wondering if she should be adding _outdated sense of chivalry_ to the growing list of mysteries about his person.

The bag contains a round jewel, ruby red and set in a golden necklace that Isabela can tell at a glance is not real gold, but she doesn’t say anything, especially not since Leto is watching with wide eyes, the anxiety in his gaze barely concealed.

“It’s—” She rubs her thumb over the polished surface of the stone. “It’s _shiny_. And you’ve got it for me!” Isabela leans in and gives him a peck on the cheek without giving him the chance to pull back. By the time he jumps and a protest forms on his lips, she’s already back where she was, laughing with unrestrained joy, with enough room between them that no one can call the situation inappropriate (much, she supposes, to her disappointment; after all, _appropriate_ situation are more often than not completely, utterly _dull_ as well, and she does not think that it’s a coincidence).

Leto flushes, and the anxiety is wiped clear from his eyes just like that, though there is still a twist to his mouth that suggests some sort of doubt, but Isabela chooses to ignore it, focuses instead on the way his expression has _opened up like the way clouds clear before the sun._

What innocent youth! It is easy enough to see it without noticing the sharp angles of his face, the well-worn clothes he wears, patched and repatched in such obvious ways, the guarded expressions that somehow find their way on his face when he is lost in thought (or unconscious, as Isabela has seen; even when he is unconscious, his face is scrunched up). There is a story there, but it is not one for Isabela to pry into; this, she knows.

He is leaning forward a little bit now, peering across at Isabela from underneath the hair that falls so easily over his eyes, and there is even the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips.

All at once, Isabela wants to kiss him. _Properly_ kiss him, not just a chaste peck on the cheek, but she has a feeling that that is like as any to scare him off, so instead she turns around and holds the two ends of the necklace over her shoulders.

“Help me put it on,” she beckons, and feels the soft brush of his fingers—calloused, rough at the tips: a worker’s fingers, a servant’s—against her own, and he takes the clasp from her and clicks them in place behind her.

“I didn’t know if red would suit you,” he murmurs, voice a lot closer than he was a moment ago. “But—” he adds, haltingly, like he is daring her to contradict him. “– I think it does.”

Isabela laughs; far be it for her to ever deny a compliment.

* * *

Like that, a pattern is established between them, easy as the wind that flirts with the surface of the sea, whistling all the while.

Always, Leto visits her in the late afternoon, hovering by the shore until she spots him from the distance and swims up to greet him. She notes with pleasure the progression of that greeting from a wave to an arm around his shoulder, to a quick embrace and a kiss on the cheek.

She learns that he has a mother, whose name he had not given her, and that he has a sister, whose name he had. Leto speaks often of Varania, telling Isabela of the way she trails after him with fire in her hair and fire in her eyes; he tells her of the way she sometimes does not listen to mother’s instructions, and comes back after the sun has set, or runs off when there are chores to be done.

Worry and pride are alternately dominant in his voice when he speaks of her, and Isabela finds herself telling him things about her that she has kept carefully locked away, hidden beneath all the depth of the sea she has found her freedom in.  
  
She speaks of her own mother, whose name she refuses to remember, and speaks of the husband she had been sold to. She tells him, in perhaps too bitter a tone, about how ruinous love can be, about how it is a thing only fools fancy.   
  
“You were not always… as you are now?” he asks, when understanding lights in his eyes, and gestures to the blue-scaled tail she has now instead of legs.

Isabela laughs. “Of course not! Just imagine, how shocked your mother would be if you had a fish’s tail instead of feet!” Her tail brushes against the rock, reflecting sunlight, and there is nothing unnatural to the movement at all.

Leto looks at her, his gaze unreadable. “You don’t miss the land? The cities? Your… family?”

She thinks of the days she has spent in this new life of hers, the days without the constant weight of chains she cannot see, put there by her mother, the days spent with only the song on the wind and the song of her sisters and the song of the sea around her.

“What is there to miss?” she replies. “I’m not a hard woman to please, and there are such treasures buried in the water.”

Later, she doesn’t see Leto for three afternoons in a row, and just when worry is beginning to become an uncomfortable knot in her stomach, an unfamiliar companion in her thoughts, he is there the next day, though there are dirty bandages wrapped tight around his left arm, bruises on his throat in the shape of fingers he does not bother to hide.

Silently, Isabela unwounds the blue bandana she has over her hair—impractical, maybe, for someone who is underwater more often than not, but _oh_ , can she be stubborn if she wants to be—and ties it deftly around the dirt-streaked bandages around Leto’s arm. He watches her with half-lidded eyes, and she does not miss the tension in his shoulders, the muscles there pulled taut, ready to spring like a cat, that doesn’t relax until she pulls away.

He does not untie it, though.

That afternoon, he tells her about the master he has served for most of his life, and whom Varania has served for all of hers. _Danarius_ , he says, and the name is acid passing from his lips. In the same breath, he says, _he keeps a roof over our heads, gives us water and food and a way to keep living._

“Come away with me,” she says on a whim when she feels the anger boiling familiar and unaddressed in her own chest. “Not even he can claim you in the sea.”

Leto narrows his eyes, a scowl touching his lips, and all the wariness is there in his features once more. “I _can’t_ ,” he says, though if he is trying to convince her or himself, she does not know, and then adds, “my mother. Varania. I won’t leave them.”

“Take them with you,” Isabela tells him immediately, fiercely, because while she knows the answer is the most obvious thing in the world to her now, had it not been for Zevran telling her on a moonless evening: _it is a simple matter, no? If death does not come on its own, you will just have to give it little push in the right direction_ , she would not have seen, would not have known to _look_ for that way out.

He shakes his head, and though there is regret and longing and all the different shades of yearning so clear in that motion, they part on tense terms, and Isabela does not come close to the shore again until a cycle has passed.

The next time she sees Leto, his eyes are red-rimmed and his voice is raw with grief. In a choked voice, he says, “my sister. She’s—” and Isabela fears that that the end of that sentence will be dead, but, to her relief, it is not that.

“She is a _mage_ ,” Leto says in the same way that others would say _dead_ , and Isabela wonders if that might be the kinder option after all.

On the subject of magic, she has never been overly concerned about. What she knows for certain is that she is not one, that magic is not as conductive in the sea as it is on land, that there are few who wish to wield such a power even if it were possible among those who called the waters their home.

But she knows, in the same way that she still remembers the customs of the cities, the stigma surrounding magic. “Are mages not powerful in the Tevinter Imperium?” she asks carefully, making sure to keep her voice devoid of any accusation.

“They are, but Varania is only a child, and a slave no less. What if they take her away.” Leto’s expression crumbles and he makes a strangled sort of noise that makes Isabela want to hold him and tell him that everything will be alright. “What if she wants to go,” he adds wretchedly.

“Your sister will not let that happen,” Isabela tells him, annoyed of all things that he would so underestimate Varania like that. From what Leto has told her, from what Isabela was able to gather from the way he spoke, it is not so far an assumption to say that whatever protectiveness Leto feels for his younger sister, she feels the same for him.

It is not something that Isabela easily understands, but she thinks that it is true, anyways.

Leto remains silent.

* * *

“Why, Isabela, you cannot be falling for this dear elf, can you?”

Isabela considers the question with narrowed eyes. “Oh, sweetie, you haven’t seen him, what can you know?” She lets out an indulgent sigh, and hears Zevran’s easy laughter in reply.  
  
“Do you know, I’ve known a very pretty elf in my own time—gone, I am afraid, but nonetheless.”

This is what she tells herself: it is just a passing fancy, like the shallow affection she has felt countless times for many men she found on the shores.

It will pass, it will pass. He will be gone, and what traces he has left here on this small shore of her life for her to see will be washed away soon enough. After all, the tide leaves no footprints behind.

* * *

There are rumors gathering like whispers on the open water, passed from the wind to the sea to the men who make their living off it, of a Qunari fleet getting ready to sail in search of war and conquest. She knows that it will be a simple enough matter to avoid them, for war does not interest her when she does not have a personal stake in it, and she cannot see why the Qunari would choose now of all times to fight the mages in the seat of their power, when they are so strong already.

She stays away from the shores when the ships are near enough that their smoke covers the horizon in patches of haze, and hopes that Leto will see that she is not there, and do the same.

She gives a thought to Leto and all the innocents who will be dragged into this needless conflict, but she has known self-preservation for too long to allow herself anything more than that.

Still, her mind dwells on these things she cannot change, and she pushes her way through the currents in a sort of daze, not particularly paying attention to her surroundings, not particularly needing to in any case.

So Isabela is sent tumbling to the side when a rush of water pushes against her, and she glances at the surface to see the shadow of a ship cover the sun-dappled water. For a moment, she thinks, it must be a Qunari ship, a scout perhaps, or a straggler, or, perhaps, simply a ship of war lost on its way to make just that, but when she surfaces and catches a glimpse of the red and white of the Orlesian flag, she feels all at once relief and joy.

Orlesian ships always had such nice things on them, and Isabela supposes, that they were an acquired taste.

“My, my,” she says, mostly to herself as she sends her senses out around her, drawing to her the consciousnesses of those who dwelt in the sea, who would lend aid to her when she calls. She begins to sing, then, a slow melody leaving her lips as clear underwater as it is above the surface.

And in answer to her call, she hears first the rasp of the whale, followed closely by her sisters’ replies, adding their voices to hers.

 _I am here,_ Isabela says like a captain ordering a crew around, _I am here, and there is treasure._ And if she lets the task in front of her take her mind away from an elf whom she has not seen in a long time and cannot help but worry for, who can fault her for it?

The battle is a short one, for who can stand up to them in the very realm left to their keeping? Humans are clumsy in the water, where they can only flap about in their desperation to stay afloat, and they are easy pickings for the hungry sharks who have graciously responded to her song.

When one of the men come too close to Isabela, she draws the reef-carved daggers she keeps in a sheath across her back with the ease that tells of long practice and a natural proficiency for murder, and slits the man’s throat neatly so that the water is lapping at his life’s blood long before he realizes he is dead.

The treasure that they find is less exciting—it is only an old book written in a language that Isabela has not seen before. Isabela’s sisters are notably disgruntled by this, but Isabela is not deterred. After all, she’s seen the stuff in the hidden markets of Antiva and Rivain; there are very few things that don’t appeal to _anyone_.

She will have to talk to Zevran about getting the word out.

Before they set the ship aflame, Isabela catches a glint of silver drifting near the surface. She has never been able to swim away from something shiny, a self-professed flaw that she admittedly indulges in far too much, so she goes closer to investigate.

As she swims up to it—him—Isabela sees that it is armor on a corpse that has not succumbed to its own weight just yet. The body, face down and already showing signs of bloating, is tilting dangerously to the side; its legs are submerged already, and she knows that the rest is soon to follow.

Only…

The armor is polished to a gleam, fancy enough that she wonders what someone who would wear it was doing with a merchant ship. One of the famed knights of legend? Isabela is about to leave it when she suddenly thinks of Leto, and his thread-bare clothes, and how much safer it might be for him, if he had a set of armor.

 _You could pretend to be a knight!_ she imagines herself saying to him as she buckles the straps of the chestpiece, the gauntlets, the pauldrons on his too-thin frame. _You’ve certainly got the manners for it._

The thought is enough to spur her into action, burying her face in the water as she goes to remove each piece of armor.

* * *

Isabela waits at the shore, sitting on the rocks so close to the land that a child could walk to them with no trouble. She waits one day, then two, singing songs about jaunty love and lamenting sailors.

Two days turn into a week, and that, turns quickly into another cycle of the moon.

Isabela, in fits of impatience and self-righteousness, throws the armor she has carefully collected and shined against the rocks, but always, she retrieves them after only a few moments, and inspects them carefully for scratches.

Leto does not come.

* * *

_Run!_ Her instincts scream at her, blaring red noise in her vision as she weaves through the water, trying to lose herself in the vastness of the sea. The water is too shallow here—she needs to get further in—she has strayed too close to the shore, stayed too long in one place.

_Oh, Isabela, what a fool you are._

It is experience, only, that allows her to retain some semblance of calm even as she is rushing to get away, to run and escape lest her freedom be wrenched from her once more. In some distant corner of her mind, Isabela thinks to herself, absurdly, _why, how will I run anywhere without legs?_

The Qunari dreadnoughts blotch out the horizon, and she can feel their malice boiling over from where she is, can feel the steady thrum of motion aboard those great wooden ships of theirs.

“Where is the Tome of Koslun?” a deep voice demands, as clear as if the words were being whispered into her ear. Isabela shudders, feeling cold for the first time in years.

She surfaces briefly, cupping her hands in the direction of the looming ships. “How many times do I have to _tell_ you? I don’t have your Tome of whatever!” Which is—true, as far as the literal truth goes. Isabela had stashed that in a crevice two days after she found it; it was such a heavy thing to be lugging around all the time, after all.

“The Qun does not abide by liars. Tell us now, and your punishment shall be merciful.”

Isabela makes a face and goes under the water once more, creating a splash where she had been only moments ago. She hears a loud boom, has a moment to wonder what in the world that might be, before she is suddenly swept off-balance by a wave that had not been coming.

 _That’s… not possible,_ her reeling mind repeats as she rides the wave out, tries to regain her bearings.

Instinctively, Isabela breaks the surface again for a gasping breath that she does not need—old reflexes that betray her one last time, she curses, _can she never escape this_ —and then she is hit with a staggering amount of force, lifted out of the water. Her body feels warm and cold all at once, like electricity running through her limbs setting them on fire.

There is unbearable pain in her lower half. Wildly, she wonders if she had somehow gotten pregnant and not known it.

Everything goes black before she can contemplate the mechanics of such a thing.

* * *

She wakes up with the bitter taste of sand in her mouth, sand against her skin, sand in her hair. _There is,_ she thinks fuzzily, _entirely too much sand around me._

Then the rest of her mind catches up. Isabela sits up straight in the span from one breath to the next before regretting doing just that as a wave of vertigo makes the world spin around her.

She pushes slowly to her feet, feels herself sink in a little bit.

Wait. Isabela narrows her eyes. There’s something not right—

“Maker’s arse.. What the ever loving _fuck_.” Because sure enough, those were legs she is staring at. _Her_ legs—only, they cannot be hers, when she has given hers up so long ago, so freely?

She pulls them in towards her, and they move, bending at the knee in way that feels awkward to her. She wiggles her toes, and sees the movement reflected on these legs-that-are-not-hers.

“And this is why you don’t go messing with magic, Isabela,” she mutters to herself as she tries to remember how to walk.

* * *

Being on land is a… dry experience.

Walking is so much harder than swimming, and she has never needed to worry about things like propriety when she was literally wet all the time. Not that, she supposes, she is entirely appropriate even now.

She tries not to be.

She tries, too, not to think of what she’d had for those too-brief years in the water, singing songs of the sea.

Learning to live on land again was not the hardest thing for Isabela, who has always prided herself on her flexibility. Besides, it is not so bad when there is no unwanted husband looming over your head all day.

Kirkwall is colorful enough that none of her days are boring, but she sometimes finds herself casting wistful looks towards the docks, wishing for things now denied to her, but there is no use being constantly stuck in the past, so she spends more of her time looking forward.

She meets Hawke on one of those days when her spirit is restless, and there is the sound of waves in her ears.

With him, is a white-haired elf who is too, too familiar.

“Leto,” she says, and there are songs singing loudly in a voice not quite her own about a place she can no longer return to, at the same time that Hawke—friendly, personable Hawke—introduces him as Fenris.

Isabela swallows the faint nausea she feels when she does not see recognition in Leto’s— _Fenris_ ’—green eyes, covers it with a smile as she extends her hand out to him. He eyes her with naked distrust in his eyes, and it is almost enough to make Isabela want to drink herself blind for the night.

After a moment of silence, he grips her hand with too much strength, and then she sees it: blue cloth tied loosely around his wrist.

If her subsequent greeting—throwing an arm around his shoulders, which are more wiry than she remembers, but if he is here, then that must mean he had escaped, and surely freedom is worth a few good meals?—is more enthusiastic, more sincere, more hopeful, than before, well, that is only Isabela, she hears Varric tell Hawke in good humor.

Fenris recoils, and he scowls, his eyebrows scrunching together in a way that makes him look more like a cat than an elf. “Oh, touchy,” she drawls, but lets go and steps back to lean against the bar.

She turns to Hawke. “Well, boys? Do we have a deal or not?”

* * *

It takes a few weeks for Isabela to work up the nerve to visit the mansion that Fenris is squatting in. She tells herself she is being stupid, that she is being foolish, that she is hoping for things that are not there.

But always in answer to those thoughts comes the unbidden image of her bandana tied like a promise around his wrist.

Besides, Isabela might be a lot of things, but a coward she is not.

So she buys the most crude wine she can find in Lowtown, and slips through the window of the one lit room in his mansion, making sure to make enough noise to announce her arrival.

She spots Fenris sitting slouched in an armchair that looks like it is about to swallow him up, and grins at him. He raises an eyebrow in return, and does not get up.

“You may be surprised to hear this,” he says after a moment’s pause, “but I have a front door that is not locked.”

“Boo,” Isabela retorts, pouting, as she slinks across the room to sit on the bed. “What fun are unlocked doors? So unexciting!”

They lapse once more into silence, with only the crackle of the fire between them.

Then: “Isabela.” It is said like a test, as if he is trying her name out and seeing how it sits upon his tongue.

Isabela had something witty to say—really, she _did_ —but when she opens her mouth, all that falls out is a name that he no longer uses. “Leto,” said like a prayer to forbidden things. “You told me your name was Leto.”

Fenris looks at her, blinks those clear green eyes at her, and then he frowns, eyes narrowing in deep concentration. “I do not remember that name,” he offers finally, and stares at his hands held relaxed in front of him, stares at the token of hers he still carries. She touches the necklace at her throat, red jewel set against fake gold. They are not so different.

“But there is something I remember of—of you, of something familiar—whenever I looked towards the water.” His gaze slid down her figure, resting on her legs, which Isabela has stretched out in front of her. “You were not… as you are now.” The words strike a familiar chord with her.

“Neither are you, sweet thing,” Isabela replies softly, and walks over to him, crouching in front of him so that they were eye level with each other. She brings her left hand to his, her fingers resting lightly her bandana. She holds his gaze, and waits.

Fenris makes a small noise at the back of his throat, his breath comes hitched, and he shuts his eyes for a moment, bringing his other arm to cover them. “Isabela,” he says again, another test. And then: “Isabela.”

His voice is just as she remembers it, perhaps not physically—it is rougher, deeper, raw in a way that it had not been before they had been separated by the years—but all the same things are there. There is something brighter, too, that had not been there when she first asked him to come with her: disbelief, and the first notes of hope.

As if he is reading her thoughts, the corner of his mouth pulls up slightly, and he says, “You told me to go with you, but it seems that you have come to me instead.” He does not move. “Do you miss it?” Unknowingly, he echoes the words he had asked her long ago, about much the same thing, and she wonders if perhaps he _does_ remember.

“Yes,” she says, thinking of endless depths and open waters, then the pictures change, and instead she sees Leto as he had been, dark-haired and innocent, sees Fenris as he is, guarded and yet not hopeless. She thinks of all the things she has relearned about the land, about Kirkwall and its colorful, colorful residents. She thinks to the book she has left in the sea, and all the grief it has caused her. “No.”

Realization hits, sudden as a flash of lightning in a storm, that perhaps it had not been the Qunari who had done this to her. Perhaps it had never been a permanent state of things—an escape, in more than one ways, but not a way of life, no.

She has escaped from the life she had long ago, when her name was not Isabela, and laughter did not come so easily to her, and she has escaped the Qunari when they sought to take away her freedom, and perhaps, there is simply no more to escape from, that she no longer needs to lose herself in the sea.

Isabela hums a song of sea-salt and high winds, with laughter in her voice and feeling suddenly warm and light in her chest, as she leans in to kiss the smile on his lips. The tip of his nose brushes hers, and the laugh bubbles over into a series of giggles she can not quite bite down. She feels Fenris’—Leto’s—answering rumble of amusement, and she reaches for his hand so that their fingers are entwined.

“No, there's nothing to miss, not anymore.”


End file.
